Obstacles
to Consciousness in Corporations

Pamela
Buckle, Ph.D.

School
of Business, Adelphi University

PO
Box 701, Garden City NY, 11530-0701,
USA

buckle@adelphi.edu

Abstract

Managers draw on many
information
sources to aid in corporate decision making. One source of
information
usually overlooked is the unintended, self-organized patterning of
behaviour
that spontaneously emerges in complex human systems.

Typically, managers ignore or
misinterpret the unexpected behaviours and paradoxical occurrences that
emerge,
often repeatedly, in every workplace. However, such
behaviours and
occurrences reflect a dimension of unintended coherence – of
self-organized
patterning – within a corporation. Such coherence offers rich
insights
about previously unrecognized corporate goals, fears, weaknesses, and
strengths. When managers fail to discern self-organized
patterns in
unintended organizational behaviour, such patterns fail to yield the
wisdom they
otherwise could. In order for managers to make use of this
rich
information source, they must possess skills in self-organized pattern
identification and analysis. Drawing from a grounded theory study of
managerial
pattern identification and analysis, this article examines forms of
evidence of
self-organized dynamics that can help people begin to become conscious
of these
dynamics in the workplace. I also examine obstacles to
consciousness of
self-organized patterns, that result in managers ignoring or
misinterpreting
these patterns.

Failing to accurately discern
unintended organizational coherence yields unfortunate consequences for
corporations. Among them is a fracturing of the systemic
relatedness
possible between managers and the organizations in which they work.
As
long as managers fail to understand the language of systemic
self-organization,
they cannot relate effectively with the organizations in their care.
By
contrast, learning to discern the unintended coherence that emerges in
organizations allows managers to engage in more effective relationships
with
organizations as the complex entities they are.

Keywords: corporations,
self-organization, consciousness, reflexivity

Self-Organization: Unintended
Coherence in the Workplace

“Although
the specific path followed by the
behaviour [of a system]… is random

and
hence unpredictable in the long term, it
always has an underlying pattern to it,

a
“hidden” pattern…. Chaos is therefore order
(a pattern) within disorder.”

(Stacey,
1993:228)

Managers shoulder
responsibility to
make decisions, large and small, every day. These decisions
can have
tremendous impact on people’s work activities, their livelihoods, and
the
survival of the firms in which they work. Not surprisingly,
then,
corporations gather and generate volumes of data to aid managerial
decision
making. Information helps managers to design and maintain
organizations
that are coherent.

Managers design organizations
to be
coherent. The coherence that managers envision gets
communicated through
strategic plans, corporate memos, and departmental meetings.
Communication vehicles like these convey the corporate coherence that
managers
intend to see. However, everyday in organizations, unexpected
behaviours,
anomalous events, and paradoxical occurrences unfold that have no clear
relevance to the coherence that managers design. The
confusion – and
frustration – that such happenings create signals the meeting of two
organizational coherences: one intended and another
unintended.
Alongside managers’ intended corporate coherence, the systemic dynamic
Jantsch (1980) called self-organization
operates
autonomously of the coherent strategies, objectives, and tactics that
managers
design. Self-organization is one way a complex
system displays
coherence – unintended coherence.

In unintended workplace
behaviours,
self-organization expresses an organization’s deeply-held (perhaps
barely
conscious) perceptions about itself. Self-organized patterns
reflect a
system’s collective memory (Cilliers, 1998). Such patterns also reflect a
system’s beliefs about its identity, including how and to what extent
that
identity may be under threat (Maturana & Varela, 1980). Such patterns
reflect a
system’s perceptions about the future, which may not be fully
recognized by
organizational members (Conforti, 1999). Underlying otherwise
perplexing organizational behaviours are goals, desires, fears,
strategies,
traps, developmental stages of maturity, strengths, weaknesses, values,
taboos,
and unacknowledged cultural characteristics (Mark & Pearson, 2001). Self-organized behaviour is a
symbolic language, expressing how an organization subconsciously
perceives
itself at any given point in time. Self-organization is
self-expressive. It offers informative, real-time data about
the state of
an organization.

The corporate decision making
that
unfolds every day in organizations often overlooks the valuable
insights that
self-organization can afford. When managers fail to discern
self-organized patterns in unexpected organizational behaviour, such
patterns
fail to yield the wisdom they otherwise could.

Often, managers ignore
unexpected
behaviours in corporate settings. Or, when such happenings
are too big to
ignore, managers typically view them as problematic.
Managers’ urgency to
overcome unexpected challenges that arise in corporations is
understandable. However, managers focussed on removing
unexpected
challenges often mobilize remedies without fully understanding the
dynamics
driving the behaviour they want to fix. As an analogy,
physicians can
more effectively prescribe a medical intervention when they know with
some
precision the health situation a patient is facing.
Similarly, managers
can better manage and influence organizational behaviour when they
understand
with some precision the self-organized dynamics driving that
behaviour.
When an organization’s coherence departs from that which leaders expect
– when
it shifts into self-organized coherence – the management challenge
becomes
discerning the identity of the unintended coherence and regaining the
capacity
to influence organizational behaviour.

Self-organized
patterning as a form of overlooked coherence within corporate
settings. This discussion of
self-organized pattern detection
draws from a grounded theory study conducted between 2000 and
2005. The
study examined the pattern-detection processes of people working in
corporate
settings. The purpose of this paper is threefold.
First, I will
present forms of evidence of self-organized patterning that exist in
work
settings. Second, I will examine obstacles that managers face
in
perceiving and understanding such evidence when it arises.
Third, I will
describe consequences of managers’ failure to become conscious of
self-organized dynamics in the workplace.

Study Method

The purpose of the study was to
identify theoretical constructs and relationships that could inform
future
research regarding the identification of self-organized patterns in
work
settings. An initial literature review suggested
that existing
management research lacked attention to ways in which managers could
engage in
self-organized pattern identification. To address this gap in
understanding, a grounded theory research method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) guided this exploratory
research. Sampling, data collection, and data analysis for
this study
focused on describing the conceptual categories involved in
practitioners’
pattern-identification processes.

The grounded theory method
encourages data collection from diverse sources to assist researchers
in
developing clearly-described conceptual categories.
Accordingly, I
collected 60 incidents of pattern identification from 23 practitioners
who live
and work in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia.
In their organizations, these individual held roles including industry
analyst,
consultant, entrepreneur, managing partner/owner, vice president, and
CEO. Study participants applied their pattern identification
skills
within an array of industries including health care, education, social
services, manufacturing, construction, investment, the judicial system,
international diplomacy, the arts, and the public sector. All
participants had a reputation for being able to detect self-organized
patterns
where others in their workplaces tended only to see problematic
“chaos,”
“mistakes,” or “counterproductive behaviour”; hence, in this article I
refer to
study participants as pattern analysts. I interviewed pattern
analysts in
person or by telephone. I also gathered data about pattern
detection
processes as a participant observer, in a group of individuals who met
periodically between December, 2000 and July, 2003 to discuss
self-organization
in corporate and other settings. In total, this study
generated 21,560
lines of transcription (from tape recorded interviews) and field
observation
notes, which were entered into a qualitative research software analysis
tool,
ATLAS.ti, for initial coding and analysis.

In accordance with the grounded
theory method, examination of the literature unfolded concurrently with
data
collection and analysis. As I identified conceptual themes in
the interviews
and field notes, I turned to organizational literatures that addressed
such
themes to compare and contrast my study findings with that of other
researchers. Where possible, I focused my literature review
on top tier
management journals [1]. However, it became quickly apparent
that
systemic self-organization – and how organizational practitioners make
sense of
it – has received scant treatment in mainstream management
literature (Buckle,
2005),
reaffirming the argument that
consciousness of self-organization in workplaces has been
under-studied. I was able to identify sufficient
management
literature to legitimize this research. However, examining
that
literature concurrently with data collection and analysis had another
impact on
this study. The literature itself became another source of
data that
enabled the development of conceptual categories.
[2]
Repeated iterations of data collection, data analysis, and literature
review
clarified and refined the conceptual categories that emerged through
this
study.

I sought to validate study
findings
in a number of ways. The grounded theory approach itself acts
as a
quality-control mechanism for the findings it generates, by encouraging
the
collection of data from diverse individuals and other
sources. By
purposely seeking a sample of individuals working in widely diverse
industries,
the conceptual categories generated in this study can be assumed to
have
explanatory power in a broad variety of contexts (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). I also sought to
assure
internal validity through enlisting several study participants to read
and
comment on early drafts of the study’s findings, as per the advice
of (Maxwell,
1998; Yin, 1998).

In
the
following pages, I will present what this study uncovered regarding
evidence of
self-organized patterns in corporations, and the obstacles that
practitioners
face when attempting to become aware of self-organized workplace
coherence.

Evidence of Unintended (i.e.
Self-Organized) Coherence

Self-organization, by
definition, involves
the emergence of unplanned, unintended dynamics. However,
corporate life
does offer specific clues that self-organization is behind puzzling
behaviour. In this section, I will present three categories
of evidence
of unintended coherence used by corporate pattern analysts: anomalies, paradox, and repetition. Pattern
analysts
report that the emergence of such evidence can act to alert them to the
presence of self-organized patterns in the workplace.

Anomalies as Evidence of
Self-Organized Coherence

A theory of self-organized
pattern
identification must have a place for workplace anomalies:
behaviours that
are unexpected and unintended by managers and employees
alike. In this
section, I will examine the meaning of anomalies in corporate
life. Based
on interviews and observations of corporate pattern analysts, I will
discuss
the meaning and value of anomalies for managers seeking to understand
self-organized dynamics in the workplace. I will also offer
examples of
anomalies identified by some of the men and women who participated in
this
research.

Undoubtedly, demands for
efficiency
pressure organizations to behave in routinized, predictable
ways.
However, unusual behaviours occur in corporate settings. What
is unusual
behaviour? Experience ingrains in managers a familiarity with
normal or
typical workplace behaviours. Unusual behaviour, by contrast, refers
to abnormal or
atypical happenings that unfold within an organizational
system.
For the purposes of this study, behaviours include people’s micro-level
outward actions
or demeanours, and also macro-level phenomena, such as workplace
circumstances
or events, corporate performance, and prevailing moods or cultural
climates (deGreene,
1997).
Corporate pattern analysts
observe anomalous workplace behaviours in many shapes and
sizes. Often,
unusual behaviours emerge merely as atypical, outliers in the normal
curve of
expectable events and behaviours in daily organizational
life. One
pattern analyst described her response to an organization exhibiting
slightly
unusual behaviour this way: “There is a pervading sense that
something
just doesn’t fit… There’s not congruence in everything.”
Workplace
anomalies generate in corporate pattern analysts this sense that
“something
doesn’t fit.”

Two forms of workplace
anomalies
signal to pattern analysts that unintended congruence (i.e.
self-organized
patterns) may have emerged in their midst.. A pattern analyst
offered an example of
a workshop participant who was operating out of role, differentiating
himself
from other participants with peculiar behaviour:

He
was making lots of disruptions….
We had a writing exercise and he didn’t have his own paper, and somehow
in the
process of writing, half of his pages got torn in half and
crumpled. And
this whole time he was sitting there with his briefcase huddled to his
chest…
very clearly uncomfortable.

Another
pattern analyst reported an example of a regional symphony that hired
an
Executive Director who did not like classical music. One
pattern analyst
has noted that corporations regularly operate out of role identity in
deciding
to purchase sports stadiums – commonplace occurrences, but behaviours
falling
outside the realm of the business in which they are operating (Patrizio, 2001). These examples have
in
common a person or entire company acting outside those behaviours
commonly
understood as central to their key business
functions. A second form
of workplace anomaly I call intense reactions.
One pattern analyst found herself cued to particularly strained
dynamics at a
worksite in this way. After each visit to this location, she
would “leave
the office feeling like I’d smoked two packs of cigarettes.
It’s very
uncommon for professionals to smoke in this region but nearly everyone
does in
this particular office.” Another pattern analyst described an
encounter
where, “soon after the meeting began, tension was really high in the
room.
If these two staff members had had bazookas, they’d have been killing
one
another”. Unusually pervasive stress-coping mechanisms and
unusual anger
both constitute intense responses to organizational dynamics that, on
the
surface, do not seem capable of instigating such
reactions.

For
many corporate pattern analysts, the process of pattern detection
begins when
they notice behaviours that differ from the intentionally-organized
patterns of
behaviour that managers orchestrate in order to lead
organizations. Managers
involved in this research who sought to detect self-organized patterns
in the
workplace view anomalies in a company’s behaviour or performance to be
important. Conceptually, this makes sense. If
self-organization
represents an unintended form of coherence in a workplace, it stands to
reason
that unintended activities, events, or performance can act as clues to
understanding such patterns. Developing a keen attention for
anomalous
behaviour can be a valuable first step toward detecting self-organized
workplace dynamics.

Organizational
Paradoxes as Evidence of Self-Organized Coherence

If
unusual behaviours represent one form of evidence of self-organized
dynamics
involving anomaly, paradoxes are a facet of organizational life not
anomalous
at all. For pattern analysts, paradoxes bring intended
organizational
coherence and unintended coherence into sharp contrast. Here,
I will
define paradox, provide examples of it from the management literature,
and
offer examples of paradoxes noted by corporate pattern analysts that
helped
these individuals to detect autonomous, self-organized patterns that
had
emerged in organizations where they worked.

In
her survey of organizational paradoxes, Lewis (2000) described them as encompassing
perspectives, demands, and findings about organizations that appear
conflicting, opposing, or seemingly illogical. Eisenhardt) (2000) noted that paradox represents
the
simultaneous existence of two inconsistent states that strikes us as
absurd or
irrational. Paradox represents a moment of discovery of
contradictory yet
related thoughts and actions in corporate settings. In their
paradoxical
behaviours, organizations reveal the existence of “simultaneous
conflicting
truths” (Lewis,
2000:761).

Management
scholars have identified examples of common organizational
paradoxes. (Trevelyan, 2001) has written about ways that a
single managerial decision can have, simultaneously, both positive and
negative
effects on external stakeholders. (Fiol, 2002) has examined how, over time, a
hard-won organizational asset can also act as a
liability. (Miesing, 1984) has examined how innovative
and
responsible corporate planning systems can, not uncommonly, become
unreflective
routines. In the paradoxes these scholars describe, we can
perceive
realities that contradict common organizational beliefs and intentions,
discovering
that those beliefs and intentions cannot account for all that unfolds
in
organizational life.

Paradox
offers corporate pattern analysts an opportunity to recognize the
co-presence
of intended and unintended truths about a corporation. Three
examples illustrate
this point. One study participant noted that a national
social services
charity awarded the most funding to the country’s most affluent
regions, not
the most impoverished. Despite an espoused religion-based
value system,
offices in this organization had to strategize against one another to
attract
needed resources. The study participant noted that this
charity
self-organized around a pattern of fierce competition – a pattern with
considerable influence over the behaviours of its members. A
second
pattern analyst reported a case wherein a company sought to fill a
clerical job
posting. The job description for this administrative support
position
contained a substantial emphasis on advanced-level coaching
skills. Even
if the company found a person whose skills encompassed the desired
skills, the
combination of administrative support and leadership responsibility
(without
authority) would likely sabotage anyone’s possibility of success in the
role. Without realizing it, the organization had designed
this position
to fail. I offer one final example of paradox. An
employee working
at an actively “family-friendly” workplace noted that his managers
regularly
scheduled off-site, mandatory training meetings in the
evening. This
scheduling compelled most of the staff members to scramble to find
alternate
child care arrangements (Laiken, 2003). Inherent
contradictions in
each of these examples of paradox demonstrates some of the elaborate
and pervasive
configurations of behaviour in companies that operate autonomously from
the
configurations of behaviour that managers intend to yield productive
results. Corporate pattern analysts become attuned to such
paradoxes,
recognizing them as examples of intended and unintended coherence
operating
simultaneously within a company.

Paradox, unfortunately, is
common in corporate
life (Quinn
& Cameron, 1988).
However, participants in
this study commonly cited paradoxes as useful clues to pattern
detection
efforts. I turn now to another common clue to the presence of
self-organized dynamics in the workplace: commonality itself,
in the form
of repetition.

Repetition
as Evidence
of Self-Organized Coherence

The
definition of pattern –
“an arrangement of repeated or
corresponding parts” (McLeod, 1984) – points to repetition as a
category of evidence useful to corporate pattern analysts.
Here I offer
both definitional and theoretical arguments that unintended
organizational
behaviours tend to repeat themselves. In fact, oftentimes,
repetition of
perplexing behaviours is what makes them recognizable to pattern
analysts. In this section, I explore the use of repetition in
corporate
pattern analysis.

Theorists
in various disciplines have observed that unintended dynamics often
repeat. Carl Jung theorized that much human behaviour in
contemporary
times unwittingly follows ancient, archetypal patterns that people
unconsciously re-enact (1959). [4] Freud
hypothesized that
people keep their fixation on such patterns unconscious as a primitive
human
defence against acknowledging truths about their past; people
repeat
behaviours as a way to avoid consciously remembering
them (Conforti,
1999).
The complexity literature
notes that repetitive dynamics are characteristic of
self-organization.
In business, for example, specific behavioural dynamics that occur at
the
industry or organizational levels will often “echo” at the business
unit, work
group, or individual levels (Thietart & Forgues,
1995).
Theoretical arguments such
as these suggest that people unconsciously repeat certain patterns of
behaviour.

The
relationship between patterns and repetition is a fortuitous one for
people who
want to discern self-organized workplace dynamics. As a
self-organized
dynamic repeats, the likelihood of its detection increases.
Often a
person must encounter a particular dynamic repeatedly to be able to
discern the
patterned nature of that dynamic (Johnson, 2001).

Participants
in this study intuitively understood the connection between patterning
and
repetition, and they used this conceptual link to detect self-organized
dynamics in the workplace. To the question, “how do you
detect a
self-organizing pattern in your workplace?” one study participant
replied that
his ability to discern and understand the nature of any particular
self-organized
dynamic increased with its reoccurrence: “The pattern gets
clearer when
you see the pattern keep repeating.” Another pattern analyst
explained,
“I look first of all for something that repeats itself.
That’s the
critical moment. Then I look for the context in which it’s repeating
itself too
– across multiple contexts… Are there common variables that would
contribute to
this repetition?” Other pattern analysts used the repetitive
nature of
self-organized patterns to aid their powers of prediction.
Once those
analysts had a fairly clear idea of the nature of a particular pattern,
they
made predictions about the organization’s future behaviour then waited
to see
if their predictions would unfold. As one analyst said,
“[Patterns are] predictive
about what will happen next. I won’t necessarily know with a
guarantee
what will happen next.… [But I know with] high probability what might
happen
next, and also where to look for what might happen
next.”

A
variety of evidence presents itself to managers interested to identify
the
self-organized dynamics that emerge in corporate settings.
Insofar as
self-organization is unintended, organizational anomalies offer clues
to its
presence. Insofar as self-organization is a dynamic that is
organized and
autonomous, organizational paradoxes bring into focus elaborately
interconnected behaviours that serve goals quite unrelated to those
managers
consciously espouse. Insofar as self-organization is
patterned, it echoes
and repeats over time and throughout locations within a corporate
system, much
as the fractal forms identified by Mandelbrot (1982a; 1982b) in both natural and social
systems. None of the pattern analysts I interviewed
or observed
could detect a single instance of anomaly, paradox, or repetition, then
instantly grasp the nature of a self-organized dynamic.
Nonetheless, such
occurrences acted as evidence that, over time, yielded consciousness of
unmistakeable coherence in otherwise perplexing organizational
events.

The
theory of self-organized pattern
detection emerging from this study suggests that anomalies,
paradoxes, and repetition
are conceptual categories that are readily identifiable by workplace
practitioners. While each of these categories makes
self-organized
pattern detection achievable, this study also yielded discoveries about
impediments to pattern detection. I turn now to discuss these
obstacles.

Obstacles
to Awareness of Self-Organized Coherence

I
have argued that self-organized
dynamics offer important, although often unrecognized, information
about the
corporations in which these patterns arise. I have discussed
evidence
that allows some managers become conscious of self-organized
patterns.
Now I wish to examine why such consciousness can be difficult to
achieve.
In this section, I present four conceptual categories obstructing such
consciousness: viewing organizations as tools, the
“problem” label,
the stance of expert,
and entrainment.
I will show how both academic writing and laypeople’s assumptions about
the
purpose and appropriate behaviour of organizations collude to create
obstacles
to awareness of self-organized patterns.
I will argue that
the tendency to characterize unintended organizational events as
“problems”
impedes understanding of self-organized patterns. I will
examine how a
pattern analyst’s self-perception as “expert” in the management and
understanding of organizational dynamics acts as an impediment to
self-organization pattern detection. And I will explore why
pattern
analysts themselves fall prey to self-organized dynamics, making it
difficult
to recognize the patterns in which they’ve become ensnared.
These
obstacles to awareness of self-organized dynamics act as unfortunate
impediments to consciousness about such patterns in corporate life.

Obstacles
to Awareness
of Self-Organization: Viewing Organizations as Tools

Commonly-held
assumptions about the purposive nature of organizations impede people’s
ability
to detect self-organized patterns in the workplace. To
support this
argument, I refer to an academic argument that organizations are a
social
technology. I argue that the view of organizations as tools
has permeated
practitioner thought and language. My intent is to show that viewing
organizations as tools to
achieve managerial aims tends to
result in self-organized patterns remaining unnoticed.

Humans
are a tool-making species (Oakley, 1964). The modern world
possesses
an unprecedented variety and quantity of technology. Technology
usually refers to inanimate tools or machines. However,
scholars (e.g., Hickson,
Pugh, & Pheysey, 1969;
Perrow, 1967; Pugh et al., 1963) use the term to mean “the
organization
of knowledge, people, and things to accomplish specific practical
goals” (Winston,
2003):1).
Contemporary workplaces,
then, are examples of “a technology for producing a subset of the
objects and
artefacts that society demands” (Hatch, 1997:128). Organizations
pervade
our society. They are, perhaps, the most potent tool humans
have ever
created.

In
popular thought and metaphor, organizational practitioners understand
organizations as machines built for human use (Morgan, 1997). Evidence of this
view
emerges in language such as “management tools,” “change levers,”
“driving
change through a corporation,” “building solutions,” and “reengineering
companies for peak efficiency” (Wheatley &
Kellner-Rogers,
1996).
Many a practitioner and scholar alike
believe that the machine-like nature of organizations is what enables
them to
produce ordered activity.

However,
like any machine, organizations sometimes surprise us. We
design
organizations to gain control of scarce resources and transform them
into wealth.
Although we design organizations for this purpose, organizations, like
other
tools, often behave in ways we neither intend nor expect.
“Technologies
exhibit superfluous efficacy or polypotency in their functions,
effects, and
meanings” (Sclove,
1995:20).
Despite our best
planning and implementation strategies, organizations’ actions generate
unexpected consequences (Selznick, 1953). Despite designers’
considerable intelligence, organizations’ behaviours and impacts can
differ
widely from their creators’ plans or members’ expectations.
Dynamics of
self-organization are one of the unintended consequences of
organizational
life. We attribute considerable power to our
organizations.
However, their unpredictable polypotency renders them considerably
flawed
instruments of human intention.

Management
theorists acknowledge that unintended consequences can arise within
organizations. However, the conceptualization of
organizations as tools
to achieve managerial goals remains a compelling ideal to theorists and
managers alike. Such a conceptualization is limited, tending
to leave little
room for awareness of the spontaneous self-organized patterns that
emerge
autonomously from the behaviour an organization is designed to produce.

Obstacles
to Awareness
of Self-Organization: The "Problem" Label

A
limited understanding of the nature of organizations is one impediment
to
consciousness of self-organized dynamics in a workplace. I
now examine
what gets labelled a “problem” in organizations. The
“problem” label
is another impediment to consciousness of self-organized
patterns.

Labelling
unanticipated behaviours, paradoxes, and repetition as “problems” is
common
corporate practice. In this section I argue that this
practice obstructs
the identification of self-organized patterns. I make this
claim because,
even if a pattern analyst notices evidence of self-organized dynamics,
problematizing that evidence obstructs the analyst’s ability to
understand that
evidence as coherent; problematizing obstructs one’s ability to see a
pattern
amidst the anomalies and paradoxes of corporate life.

According
to The New Collins Thesaurus,
synonyms of the
noun problem
include a “can of worms,”
“trouble,” and “delinquent” (McLeod, 1984). Labelling
unexpected
organizational behaviours or paradoxes as problems characterizes them
in terms
of their failure to be predicted, desirable, or good. When
people
classify any organizational behaviour as a problem, this assessment
affirms
their commitment to their existing understandings of how an
organization and
its members should behave. Any behaviours departing from this
understanding, by default, become problems. Rather than
describing
unusual behaviours or paradoxes in terms of what they are, labelling
them
problems categorizes them in terms of what they are not. They
are “cans
of worms,” “trouble,” or “delinquent” because they failed to meet
expectations.

Examples
of this labelling style abound in workplaces, in comments like, “This
was a
problem trainee.” Employees complain that individuals,
departments, or
entire organizations “are not doing their job” (a description that
implies the
presence of one or more problems). The problem label
generally refers to
a situation external to the person making this
characterization. And, the
label may often accompany a distressed inward reaction. For
example, one
pattern analyst involved in this study recalled, “I used to get really
upset –
distraught – when things went ‘wrong.’ I felt like, ‘They
haven’t behaved
properly! Somehow they tricked me!’ It was a big
thing.” The
problem label is common in organizations. However, for
self-organized pattern
detection, it is, well, problematic.

True,
organizations rent workers’ experience and expertise, in large part, so
those
workers will detect and correct problems. The problem label
can be useful
when it initiates actions designed to get a system back on track and
return it to
behaviours that lead to desired performance. The problem
label works when
the achievement of performance via predetermined means is the
goal.
However, labelling unusual behaviours or organizational paradoxes as
problems
acts as an impediment when people want to identify self-organized
patterns in
workplaces.

By
definition, self-organized patterns are not predetermined.
When
understanding the dynamics of such a pattern is one’s goal,
problematizing
unanticipated occurrences interferes with successful pattern
analysis.
Fundamentally, the label classifies behaviour in terms of what it is
not, or
how it is wrong. Characterizing behaviours as problematic
fails to help
us understand what pattern does
govern that
behaviour, or how that behaviour is
accomplishing some
unrecognized purpose well.

In
organizations, people tend to characterize unexpected behaviours as
problems. However, remaining open and curious toward
organizational surprises
is an important attitudinal strategy for understanding self-organized
dynamics. Such openness is a radical cognitive stance in
organizational
life. That knowledge workers would permit themselves an
honest encounter
with surprise runs counter to what management literature would leave us
to
expect. [5] This
literature conveys the unequivocal message that surprises are unwelcome
in
corporate life. To management scholars, surprises are
undesirable
discontinuities or disruptions (Ansoff, 1975; Erlenkotter, Sethi, &
Okada,
1989) to
be shielded against (Lampel & Shapira, 2001) or otherwise actively
avoided (King,
1995).
This literature assumes that
managers are, or should be, positioned against surprise for two
reasons. First,
surprise implies the failure of a company’s forecasting techniques to
eliminate
surprise (Ansoff,
1975; Watkins & Bazerman, 2003). Second, managers do or
should position themselves against surprise because it represents a
threat to
an organization’s continued survival. (Consider descriptions
of
organizations “that cannot afford” surprises in the workplace [Coutu, 2003], and the linking of surprises
with
organizational “crises” [Ansoff, 1975].) Much management writing
recommends that managers and theoritst have a responsibility to help
organizations avoid being surprised (King, 1995; Weick &
Sutcliffe, 2001).
In short, surprises have a
reputation as bad news. While some exceptions to this message
do emerge
in the literature (i.e., Louis, 1980), rarely do they treat surprise as a
helpful, or even neutral, emotion resulting simply from a difference
between
anticipated and actual experiences in workplace settings. The
management
literature characterizes surprise as a problem.

Self-organized pattern
detection may
redeem surprises from this problematic fate. People skilled
in corporate
pattern analysis view surprise as a valuable emotion in service of
self-organized pattern detection. One pattern analyst
commented,

A client of mine just the other
day said, “It always amazes me how you
don’t get all upset about something going wrong.” Well,
that’s the issue,
she things of it in terms of something “going wrong.” Instead
of speaking
that way, I ask myself, “What’s the real pattern here?” Have
I really
been honest about what’s going on here? Am I really paying
attention to
what’s actually happening?

As this analyst’s reflections
suggest,
surprises represent opportunities for destabilizing preconceived
assumptions
about how members of an organization should be behaving, and
discovering new
understandings about what patterns govern how members actually are
behaving.
“There’s a tremendous gift in things that don’t fit, I think.
When I come
up against them I have to rethink some of my assumptions,” commented
one study
participant. The “problem” label is an obstacle to
consciousness of
self-organized patterns. Reframing organizational problems as
potentially
informative surprises is a way to overcome this obstacle.

Obstacles to Awareness of
Self-Organization: The Stance of
Expert

How we – management researchers
and
practitioners alike – problematize unintended workplace behaviours acts
as an
impediment to discerning unintended coherence in
organizations. Who we
train to lead and work in organizations presents another impediment.

An irony emerged during data
collection for this study. When pattern analysts met to
analyze
perplexing cases of unexpected organizational behaviours or paradoxes,
those
people with expertise in a business setting like the one being analyzed
typically could not detect patterns in the evidence that was
presented.
In this section, I argue that the tendency for people in organizations
to
behave as experts impedes the ability to appreciate unexpected
behaviours,
paradoxes, or unexplained repetition as patterned. I will
examine why
people behave as experts in corporate settings. I will
examine why business
training often does not help one understand self-organized patterns,
and I will
explain analytic techniques used by pattern analysts to overcome the
obstacle
presented by their business experience and training.

Expertise is prized by
organizations
and those who work in them. Business students pay tens of
thousands of
dollars in tuition to learn to evaluate better business administration
from
worse, effective corporate performance from ineffective, and
appropriate
courses of managerial action from inappropriate. Normative
judgment about
managerial action and business behaviour is, perhaps, the central skill
that
business schools and management training programs transmit.
Employers
prize this expertise, as reflected in the increased salaries awarded to
MBA
graduates (Page,
2003).
Several organizational
studies (e.g., Alba & Moore, 1983; Burt, 1983;
DiMaggio
& Powell, 1983; Kadushin, 1968) have helped researchers understand
people’s deeply ingrained tendency to behave as they believe people in
their
positions should behave. People working in business settings
try hard to
act like business experts.

A confident ability to apply
expertise in the face of business problems is reassuring to corporate
shareholders. However, this study suggests that the
stance of expert impedes one’s ability to understand
self-organized patterns. The logic of business differs from
the logic of
self-organized patterns. Understanding
patterns operating
according to logic that runs autonomous from business logic requires
corporate
pattern analysts to engage in analytical techniques that run counter to
the
business acumen that their organizations sanction.

To detect and understand
self-organized dynamics, corporate pattern analysts must learn to
temporarily
bracket or suspend their business expertise. This is a
tremendously
difficult technique for corporate pattern analysts to master.
It requires
them to distance themselves from the very ways of thinking whence they
derive
their corporate reputations, power, and control (Argyris, 1976). “Turning off” one’s
“expert
mode” enables a pattern analyst to engage another analytical
technique:
taking the counterintuitive stance that every unexpected or paradoxical
action,
decision, emotion, and behaviour an organization displays is entirely
appropriate to whatever self-organized pattern is operating in that
system (Kaufmann,
2003).
By “appropriate” I am not
suggesting that self-organized behaviours are acceptable – often, they
cause
corporations considerable damage. Rather, bracketing one’s
business
training and experience is an analytical technique helpful to pattern
analysts.
It enables pattern analysts to use a technique of viewing even
perplexing
organizational behaviours as appropriate, accurate expressions of some
unknown
pattern. Together, the techniques of bracketing one’s
business expertise
and viewing all organizational behaviours as appropriate give pattern
analysts
an ability to discern coherence in those behaviours that people
operating
within the confines of their business expertise cannot.

When business experts fail to
suspend normative
business judgments, they fail to discern the evidence that a
self-organized
dynamic has emerged, or they fail to discern how such evidence is
interconnected into a self-organized logic quite independent of the
prevailing
logics governing a firm. Remaining caught within the logic of
one’s
formal and informal work training (“book learning” and “street smarts”
alike)
develops a business acumen that can act as a perceptual “corporate
immune
system” (de Gues cited in Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, & Flowers,
2005),
preventing the detection of self-organized
dynamics. Proverbial wisdom counsels that, “to a hammer,
everything looks
like a nail.” Unless corporate professionals know when to
forgo the tools
afforded by their business training, their hard-won professional
training will
act as a barrier to the detection of self-organized patterns.

Obstacles to Awareness of
Self-Organization: Entrainment

The apparent rationality of
business
training tends to convince corporate professional that their knowledge
somehow
distances them from organizational difficulties. Armed with
expertise, we
can recognize, predict, avoid, and control organizational events,
exerting our
will to act on them. Here, I wish to present a final obstacle
to
awareness of self-organized patterns – a characteristic of
self-organization
that confounds the assumption that intelligence and intention can
neutralize
the adverse impacts of self-organized dynamics.

Self-organization is a systemic
dynamic that entrains participants into patterned behaviour. Entrainment occurs without participants
recognizing it. This characteristic of self-organization is
another
impediment to consciousness of self-organized dynamics. In
this section I
will define entrainment, providing examples of what it does to pattern
participants and pattern analysts alike.

Self-organized dynamics in a
workplace enlist the participation of people who work there.
People
become entrained in self-organized systemic dynamics. To
understand
entrainment, consider this observation, made by a researcher
interviewing
executives in the tobacco industry. “I felt the presence of
the company
within them. … I felt that I was speaking with more company than
person, or
perhaps a person who could no longer distinguish between the
two”
(Rosenblatt, 1995 cited in (Bella, 1997). Pattern analysts
encountering self-organized workplace dynamics offered similar
accounts.
To a degree, pattern participants’ individuality becomes subsumed in
the
maintenance of self-organized patterns. When people become
entrained in a
pattern, their speech, behaviour, and reasoning styles express the
pattern in
which they are entrained.

Entrainment becomes an obstacle
to
the consciousness of self-organized workplace patterns because pattern
analysts, themselves, can and do become entrained in the patterns they
seek to
detect and understand. On a simple level, pattern analysts
may find
themselves unconsciously synchronizing their body language to that of
pattern
participants (Kaufmann,
2003).
More subtly,

There is an overlap between the
inner structure of one’s internal psyche
and the outer structure of external organizations that influence the
mind….
[T]here is a constant and strong interplay between the structure of the
internal personality of an individual and the structure of the external
environment. (Mitroff,
1983:90).

As one pattern
analyst commented,
a pattern analyst examining a self-organized dynamic “will also orbit
in its
trajectory.”

As a systemic phenomenon,
entrainment challenges the attempts of scholars and pattern analysts to
separate impersonal observations from personally entangled
experience (Colaizzi,
1978).
At any point during one’s
attempts to understand a self-organized dynamic, pattern analysts may
suddenly
discover that they have unwittingly adopted roles, moods, or
decision-making
habits that belong to the self-organized pattern they are seeking to
understand. For example, self-organized patterns in the
workplace often
form around ineffective interpersonal relationships. Several
study
participants reported incidents where they suddenly discovered
themselves to be
involved in a similar, ineffective dynamic themselves. Such
discoveries
are both highly destabilizing and intensely revealing.
Repeatedly,
pattern analysts reported that their sense of personal autonomy becomes
overtaken by discoveries that they have become entrained, for a time at
least,
in self-organized patterns. Entrainment shifts the
pattern-detection
process from an intellectual exercise to a personal
encounter.

Entrainment is a characteristic
intrinsic to self-organization. Not uncommonly in
organizations, people
“will act in ways that are counterproductive; they will tend to be
unaware that
they themselves are doing so, yet tend to be aware when others are
doing
so” (Argyris, 1982:104). Highly skilled pattern
analysts develop the ability to recognize when they themselves have
become
entrained in a self-organized dynamic: “To be able to see
that they are
‘carriers’ of the very illnesses that they decry is an important step
forward’ (Argyris,
1976:74).
Unrecognized entrainment
is an obstacle to people’s consciousness of self-organized dynamics in
organizations. Recognized entrainment is humbling and
maddening, but also
vitally necessary to successful pattern analysis.

Managers who wish to become
conscious of the
self-organized dynamics in their corporations face some formidable
obstacles. These include commonly-held views about
organizations’ role as
tools, the tendency to focus on the “problematic” aspects of unintended
behaviours, the expectation that businesspeople behave as experts with
the
ability to swiftly explain unexpected corporate performance, and the
tendency
for self- organized patterns to entrain even those trying to detect and
understand them. If as Cilliers (1998), Conforti (1999), Mark
&
Pearson (2001), and Maturana & Varela (1980) have suggested,
unintended
self-organized patterns carry information about a corporations
collective
memory, strengths, challenges, fears, …[etc], the obstacles to
consciousness I
have discussed here are worrisome. To conclude, I will
briefly discuss
some of the consequences that arise from the obstacles to consciousness
of
self-organized patterns in corporate settings.

Discussion and Concluding
Thoughts

An argument underlying this
article
is that managerial decision makers are disadvantaged if they are
unconscious of
the self-organized dynamics present in the corporations they
lead. Here,
I briefly discuss some of the consequences arising from such
unconsciousness.

When an understanding of the
self-organized dimension of a particular corporation is absent, leaders
possess
notably incomplete information, leading to impaired decision
making. The
systems dynamics writing of (Kim, 1992a; 1992b; 1994; 2000; Senge, 1990;
Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, & Smith, 1994) alerts us to some specific
consequences of decisions made in the absence of understanding of
specific
self-organized dynamics. First among them is the failure to
manage for
sustainable corporate growth. For example, awareness of
certain self-organized
dynamics in a workplace can alert managers to the dangers of focusing
on short
term fixes that divert attention from long-term, more fundamental
solutions. Similarly, awareness of certain
self-organized patterns
can keep corporations from the unchecked use of a shared resource that
will
adversely impact the company when that resource becomes
depleted. Second,
managers who do not understand self-organized dynamics can make
ineffective
choices with regard to resource allocation. For example, both
Kim and
Senge have written about the self-organized systemic dynamics that can
result
when firms develop certain firm capacities while under-investing in
other
important capacities. Finally, managers who are unaware of
self-organized
dynamics will often select and maintain damaging competitive
strategies.
Price and talent wars in a variety of industries regularly destroy
firms who
fail to see and stop the aggressive competition that results in losses
for all
involved parties. Each of these examples occurs as a result
of decision
making impaired by an inability to detect and understand self-organized
dynamics.

The systems dynamics work of
Senge
and others alerts us to the consequences that can arise when managers
are not
conscious of specific self-organized patterns in their midst.
More
broadly, leaders whose companies become caught in self-organized
dynamics often
find that their change efforts fail. Stakeholders commonly
attribute such
failure to “lacking leadership.” I describe this failure
differently – as
a case of leaders attempting corporate interventions without a clear
understanding of the dynamics producing the difficulties in the first
place. If we accept the logic that a doctor is unlikely to
prescribe
useful treatment for a patient when the physician does not understand
the
patient’s illness, why should we believe that a corporate leader can
successfully intervene to fix unproductive business performance without
understanding the self-organized dynamics generating that performance?
Failed
leadership initiatives occur when leaders fail to relate to the systems
they
govern. Self-organized patterns – unintended coherence – are
among the
organizational dynamics to which leaders must relate.

While the research findings
discussed in this article may serve to raise awareness of the presence
of
self-organized systemic dynamics and their harmful impacts on
organizations,
more work is needed. Further research should seek to identify
other
workplace cues that can indicate the presence of emergent
self-organization in
a corporate setting. And organizational researchers could do
managers a
great service by identifying fruitful strategies leaders can use to
overcome
obstacles to the awareness of self-organized dynamics in the workplace.

For years, systems
scholar (Senge,
1990) has
written of the peril and promise of
self-organized dynamics in corporations. Such dynamics are
“structures of
which we are unaware [which] hold us prisoner” (p. 94). Such
dynamics are
also patterned; they are “an elegant simplicity underlying the
complexity of
management issues” (ibid.:94). The elegant simplicity of
self-organization can become an asset for corporate decision makers
only if
leaders become conscious of such patterns. At present, most
self-organized collective behaviour operates in the unconscious depths
of
corporate life. Most management decision making arises from a
superficial
– or at the very least, seriously incomplete – picture of corporate
reality. As Senge et al. (2005) have written more recently, if
we could become
conscious of the self-organized patterns that generate much of
organizational
behaviour, “the source and effectiveness of our actions can change
dramatically” (p12).

Notes

[1]
The
Financial Times of London’s Top 40 journal list acted as a rough
indicator of
“top-tier” academic journals.

[2] This
concept-developing impact of the literature will be particularly
evident to
readers in this article’s sections on Viewing Organizationsas Tools and The “Problem”
Label.